Role overview

Optima Partners is a practitioner-led data and AI consultancy, working with some of the UK’s most recognisable brands to solve complex data and customer challenges. We are growing our engineering team and looking for bright, motivated graduates who want to learn from experienced practitioners and grow into exceptional data engineers.

As a Graduate Data Engineer, your first three to six months at Optima will be focused on building your foundations. You’ll work on internal projects and engineering accelerators - the tools, frameworks, and intellectual property that underpin our client delivery - alongside a semi-structured training curriculum covering our core technologies, consulting practice, and engineering standards. Once you’ve built that foundation, you’ll move onto live client engagements alongside experienced Optima engineers, taking on progressively more scope as your capability grows.

You’ll be supported throughout by a dedicated mentor and a development pathway aligned to the Optima Engineer framework, which covers technical depth, client interaction, and communication. This is a developing graduate pathway which means you’ll have input into how it evolves.

Key Responsibilities

During your first three to six months

• Foundations and Training: Work through a structured onboarding and training curriculum covering our engineering toolkit, consulting foundations, and delivery expectations, with regular check-ins and clear progression milestones.

• Internal Projects and Accelerators: Contribute to internal engineering projects and the development of our accelerators - reusable frameworks, tooling, and IP that we deploy across client engagements - giving you exposure to real engineering problems in a lower-pressure environment.

• Hands-on Engineering: Write clean, well-tested code that follows team standards, participate in code reviews as both author and reviewer, and apply sound engineering practice from your first commit.

• Mentorship and Development: Work closely with your mentor and senior engineers to build technical depth, take ownership of your development plan, and make active use of our training budget and allocated learning time.

As you move onto client engagements

• Pipeline Development: Contribute to the design, build, and maintenance of data pipelines under the guidance of senior engineers, taking on increasingly independent scope as your experience grows.

• Client Delivery: Join live client engagements alongside experienced Optima engineers, gaining exposure to real-world consulting across sectors including energy and utilities, financial services, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare.

• Problem Solving: Work on real-wordl technical problems building technical depth and engineering judgement over time.

• Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Produce clear technical documentation for the work you contribute to, and share what you learn with the wider engineering community through writeups, brown bags, and internal sessions.

• Collaboration: Participate actively in Agile ceremonies, stand-ups, and team discussions - asking good questions, flagging blockers early, and learning how effective engineering teams operate.

Skills and Experience

What we’d like you to bring

• Degree: A recent or upcoming bachelor’s or master’s degree (typically 2:1 or above) in a computing, data, or AI-focused discipline such as computer science, software engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, or a closely related subject.

• Programming: Some exposure to at least one language commonly used in data engineering - Python, Java, Scala, or similar. We don’t expect production experience, but you should be able to talk through code you’ve written and explain your thinking.

• SQL: A working understanding of SQL and relational concepts - gained through coursework, projects, internships, or self-directed learning.

• Data Fundamentals: A basic grasp of how data is stored, moved, transformed, and served. Familiarity with data modelling, warehousing, or distributed computing concepts is a plus.

• Cloud Curiosity: Any hands-on exposure to a major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) is welcome. If you haven’t used one, a genuine interest in getting hands-on with cloud data services is what we’re looking for.

• Version Control: Familiarity with Git and collaborative development workflows from academic projects, internships, or open-source contributions.

• Problem-solving Mindset: Evidence that you can break down an unfamiliar problem, reason about it logically, and make progress without being told exactly what to do.

Experience Level

• 0–2 years of professional experience. This role is suited to recent graduates, those in their final year of study, or early-career professionals moving into data engineering from an adjacent technical background.

• Internships, placements, dissertations, final-year projects, personal projects, and open-source contributions are all relevant - we’re interested in what you’ve built and what you’ve learned, not only what you’ve been paid to do.

• No prior consulting experience required. We’ll teach you what you need to know.

Personal Qualities

• Genuine curiosity and a self-starting attitude - you enjoy understanding how things work and dig in when something doesn’t make sense.

• Strong verbal and written communication - you explain technical ideas clearly, ask good questions, and listen before jumping to conclusions.

• A collaborative and adaptable mindset - you work well with others, take feedback constructively, and support colleagues.

• Intellectual honesty - you’re comfortable saying “I don’t know, but here’s how I’d find out.”

• Resilience and pragmatism - consulting environments shift, priorities change, and the best engineers adapt without losing momentum.

Location and Working Pattern

This role is remote-first. Our engineering hub is at 44 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, and we particularly welcome applications from candidates based in or near Edinburgh and its surrounding universities. Occasional travel to the Edinburgh office, other Optima offices (London and Bristol), or client sites should be expected.

Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK.

What We Offer

• A dedicated mentor and a clear development pathway aligned to the Optima Engineer framework.

• A protected three-to-six-month ramp-up focused on training, internal projects, and accelerator work before client deployment.

• Exposure to a wide variety of clients, sectors, and modern data technologies, not a single tech stack in a single industry.

• A training budget and certification support, plus allocated learning time to build depth in the areas you care about.

• Competitive graduate salary and a wider benefits package covering your financial, physical, and emotional wellbeing.

• A clear progression route into our Core Data Engineer role as your capability matures.

About Optima Partners

Optima Partners is a data and AI consultancy headquartered in Edinburgh with additional offices in London and Bristol. We combine practical strategy, data, and advanced AI to help some of the UK’s and world’s leading organisations realise the latent value in their customers and operations.

We work across a broad range of sectors - with deep, long-standing engagements in energy and utilities, financial services and banking, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Our client base ranges from FTSE 100 enterprises to scaling challenger brands, giving our engineers genuine variety and breadth of experience across their careers at Optima.

We are a practitioner-led organisation that invests heavily in our people - through mentorship, training, and development - and have recently been recognised as both an Emerging Star and Best-Performing Company in IT Consulting at the Megabuyte Emerging Stars Awards 2026.